ATU says huge bus mirrors & “A” pillars create huge blind spots
leading to tragic pedestrian accidents
Silver Spring, MD – The NJ Transit bus 360 camera systems are not a solution to the huge and lethal blind spots created by poor bus design says the Amalgamated Transit Union, the largest union representing transit workers in North America.
Roughly every ten days, a pedestrian is killed by a transit bus in the United States. Buses have huge left hand mirrors, mounted in critical sight lines, that needlessly block the driver's vision and cause fatal pedestrian accidents. In fact, from the point of view of the bus driver, a dozen or more pedestrians may be hidden behind the massive "A" pillar and left side mirror at any given time. All US transit buses in service today have several enormous and unnecessary blind spots, including poorly placed fare boxes and other design defects.
“These so-called bus cameras are masking the real problem of the huge blind spots created by huge mirrors and poor bus design,” said ATU International President Larry Hanley. “This is kind of like teaching Braille when you could grant drivers eyesight.”
While NJ Transit recognizes the blind spot hazards of buses with huge mirrors, they are not changing the mirrors (see photo on right), but instead they are adding the 360 cameras. The cameras are only useful in bus zones or backing, but they are absolutely not a substitute for unobstructed vision of drivers. Furthermore, a bus driver looking at a video screen in mid-turn increases risk substantially.
ATU has developed cost-effective mirror bus designs (see photo, left) that have been adopted by other transit systems and have reduced the death toll from blind spot accidents.
The poor bus design forces bus operators to resort to bobbing and weaving in their seat -- the "rock and roll" method – in an attempt to see around these massive pillars and mirrors. However, it only moves the blind angle and does not eliminate it.
The Federal Transit Administration has studied bus driver blind spots as long ago as a 2008 study and officially warned all transit agencies about the design flaw killing pedestrians, however, the agencies have refuse to fix it.
There are buses being produced and used in Europe that have 180 degrees of unobstructed vision, but transit agencies across North America refuse to buy these buses, or demand that US manufacturers keep up. Furthermore, there is a fix for the driver blind spot that costs the manufacturer under $300 per bus. That’s far less than the so-called safety add-ons.
“This are just expensive technological Band-Aids masking the real problem of blind spots of these massive manslaughter machines,” Hanley continued. “The solution is staring NJ Transit right in the face. Change the design of the buses to remove the unnecessary blind spots so we can take the blindfolds off of bus drivers and they can fulfill their mission to move the people of New Jersey safely."